Monthly Archives: October 2010

Slaughterhouse-five Presentations.

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for those of you who did your presentations yesterday. I thought they were all great!

Maybe this is a good place to expand on some of the ideas that were brought up in the presentations yesterday. I for one, found it interesting how Kurt Vonnegut, in the letter that Karina quoted, referred to the nazis as supermen. Also note how in the novel Rumfoord is referred to as a superman. Interesting parallel…no?

Anything you picked up on during the presentations that you thought was interesting and wanted to comment or expand on, comment here!

Movie (Cont.)

So now that we have finished the book and the movie, rip into either one. The movie, while definitely changing some of the order of the book, does deal with a great deal of problems in expressing them on screen. It’s not necessarily the director’s fault, but perhaps it is just not a book that can have a similar movie rendition. I know some of you were probably thinking about this anyways, so why not just throw it out there.

if you were going to make a different version of this movie, what would you change? How would you make it more similar to the book? or less similar? What are some of the strengths that the movie had and what were some weaknesses? What would you leave in and what would you take out?

Have atter…

Slaughterhouse-five Movie

I hope you are all enjoyed what we saw of the movie so far. I know it was hard to see parts of it because of the darkness in the shots and the lack of clarity from the projector. But I think the jist of what is being expressed in the film does come through.

So, after watching about 3 quarters of the movie, and reading 3 quarters of the book, what do you think? There are obviously some serious changes that the director has made, and some subtle ones too.

Some things that I think would be interesting to talk about would be the inclusion of Paul Lazzaroo as much more of a prominent character, or perhaps the Howard Campbell.

Also, the change from book to screen changes the way we learn about the events. We no longer have Vonnegut telling us this story. It is now the director presenting images and vignettes. Was it in any way successful? What are some of the strengths that you can associate with either medium?

Body Images in Slaughterhouse-Five

Something that was brought up today briefly was the aspect of body image. There seem to be conflicting views throughout the novel about body image. The Englishmen, for example, are fascinating in their obsession with body image, and their subsequent ability to stay alive because of it. In other circumstances, though, like that of Edgar Derby, his body doesn’t seem to help him at all. It may have helped him when he was a tennis court at his high school, but in Dresden, bullets cut through nicely shaped muscle the same way they cut through deformed muscle.

What are some different ways in which we can view Vonnegut’s reference to body image, not only in these instances, but in others as well? Namely Valencia, Billy in the zoo or any others you can think of

Slaughterhouse-Five: writing an anti-glacier novel

Hey everyone,

So the first chapter of the novel is really interesting to me because it goes over a lot of biographical stuff and it really is Vonnegut writing to us directly. It’s more of a Preface in that sense. one thing that came out as interesting, which we have briefly discussed in class, has to do with Vonnegut’s practicality in writing some of these novels.

The quote goes something like this:

Harrison Starr, “Is the novel and anti-war book”

Vonnegut: “Yes, I guess so”

HS: “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing an anti-war book?”

Vonnegut: “No, what so you say Harrison Starr?”

HS: “I say “Why don’t you write and anti-glacier book instead?””

“What he meant, of course. was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too” (page 3)

This comes back to our discussion about the motives of leftist or any -ists for that matter. Why do people write anti-war books if they know that they are inevitable?

Political Affiliation and America’s Current Economics Problems in Relation to Cat’s Cradle: Closing Post

To send off our discussion of Cat’s Cradle, I thought I’d open up discussion on something that was very interesting in class. The idea of other, perhaps smaller, nations forming relationships with America based on their economic power is something that makes itself present in the novel (H. Lowe Crosby as a figure of American industrial capitalism and his interest in San Lorenzo and Vice Versa). This can correspond to many other nations relationships to America as an economic Superpower. Canada, in particular, seems to have a similar relationship with the US, though not to the same extent. However, in this period of economic turmoil for our faltering economic juggernaut southern nation, is this relationship changing?

In another sense, perhaps we could view the current predicament that the US is in right now as a form of “economic ice nine”. In some respects it is. The financial crisis took shape in a similar fashion as Vonnegut’s satirical device. Instead of a physical “chip” of ice nine, however, what is transmitted is the fatal idealized way of thinking that makes debt a necessary part of American life. In a sense, this idea is what inevitably brought America to its knees, there was no money left and huge banks like Lehman brothers were literally frozen; they could not continue to operate. If someone would like to expand on this issue or tell me a am completely off base with this interpretation, feel free.

Tony

Canary in the Coal Mine and other Vonnegutian warnings

Hey everyone,

So we talked today a little bit about Cat’s Cradle and certain implications of science in the novel. I explained the imagery of the albatross, from Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, but there are many more images of warning that are evident in the novel. One thing that I just noticed while glancing through the novel was that in the pivotal apocalyptic chapter, “The grand Ah-Whoom” on pg. 216, the narrator states, “I was recalled from this dream by the cry of a darting bird above me. It seemed to be asking me what had happened. “Poo-phweet?”.

Now I know some of you will think I am just reading into this too much (cough…Juval), but I think Kurt put this imagery of a bird right at the moment the earth ends for a very specific reason. In that book I like to quote from, “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, he mentions that he thinks writers should be like canaries in the coal mine. For those who don’t know, in coal mines during the early industrial revolution, miners would send canaries into mines and if there was a poisonous gas leak, the canaries would start chirping and warn the miners not to go down. So should writers be to society as a whole…

Anyways, I think it is important that Vonnegut includes the bird at this point in the story. It is also important that the narrator is also a writer, and that he is writing all of this down after the ice-nine has turned the world topsy turvy. In this case, Jonah sees it as a responsibility to write down his experiences so that it can be a warning for anyone who finds it. Paradoxically, it seems as though there is no hope for the human race at this point in the novel. But, the fact that the writer endeavours to write anyways, even though his words may not make any difference, is important in looking at Vonnegut’s approach to writing a novel so heavily burdened with questions that seemingly do not have answers.

If anyone has anything they would like to add of this, or wants to take this idea in a different direction….post away!

Tony